The Old Champs

If you remember the HD media player battlemodo, I awarded WDTV Live and Seagate FreeAgent Theater+ the two top spots. The WD is still best for people who want a smooth interface and a hopefully increasing number of online services for streamed media. (YouTube and Pandora now, who knows what else?) It's actually the Seagate that gets KO'd by Asus.

The New Buttkicker

More functional than frilly, both the O!Play and the Theater+ handle every video file I could throw their way, they both read Mac- and PC-formatted drives, they both browse the local network well, they both read DVD menus from ripped ISO files, they both have superb video output—and they both suffer from having stupid punctuation characters in their name. But one costs $30 less than the other, according to Amazon's current prices. Not only is the O!Play cheaper, but its second USB jack is also an eSATA port which might come in handy when you start getting 1080p rips of all your favorite movies, and it has a file-copy function that lets you dump stuff from one drive to another, or to drives on the network.

I had only one major complaint with the Asus: Every time I watched a video ripped from DVD, it showed chapter numbers in a big white font for an extended period, about 15 seconds. Not only did pushing every single button I could think of not help this, but I couldn't even advance from one chapter to another by using the skip-forward button, so why do I need to know what chapter it is in the first place? A shame, but probably a bug that can be fixed really easily.

The Final Score

As I said in the battlemodo:

• If you want a full-on pirate kit, with torrent client built-in and everything, go with the Popcorn Hour (or the cheaper, quirky Patriot Box Office).
• If you want something with a nice interface and Pandora streaming music, go with WDTV.
• If you're choosing something to work with your iTunes collection of music and video, or something for your parents, probably still better to pick Apple TV—and tell them to buy or rent all their videos.

But if you want something that can play a ton of home-ripped video, or stuff you've acquired in some other high-bandwidth way, Asus is a better deal than Seagate—just as tough to stump in my battery of file format tests, with a few extra nice features. That's my best and final recommendation for HD video file playback—at least until Roku figures out what the USB jack on the HD-XR is really for. [Asus]

Great price for a high-def HDMI video player

Plays every video file I could throw at it, including DivX 7 MKVs, high-def H.264, even obscure home movies from out-of-date cameras

A bit larger than some products out there, but not by much

No streaming internet services

Annoying bug that shows chapter numbers in a large white font as you watch movies ripped from DVD

The Price: TBD, at least as far as subsidized carrier deals go. You can grab it unlocked now for about $650, but 3G may not work on your carrier.

The Verdict: The Omnia HD does everything fine, and a few things extremely well. Video playback is top notch and widely compatible, the camera is among the best I've ever seen on a cellphone, and the video recording can actually hang with a lot of pocket cams, like the Flip or Kodak Zi series. On all other counts the phone never falls flat, but it never really shines, either.

The Hardware: Your first impression of the Omnia HD is that it's big, but that's not really fair: It's a tall device, but it's not meaningfully larger than any of the other popular touchscreen phones on the market today—it's just proportioned differently (see the gallery below for comparison). And for all the hardware crammed inside, it's reasonably thin. Speaking of guts: It's got HSDPA (on European bands), GPS, 8-16GB of internal storage with microSD expansion, and 8MP, 720p-recording camera sensor, a built-in flash bulb, a forward-facing video camera, USB connector and a 3.5mm jack. The lack of HDMI-out is semi-replaced by DLNA network streaming, though it's not really an even trade. At any rate, it's a healthy phone, hardware-wise.

Samsung touts the AMOLED screen over pretty much everything else, and with some good reason. It's vibrant and sharp, but side by side with an iPod Touch, it isn't strikingly better. The benefits of the OLED, such as they are, seem to manifest themselves more in the phone's long-ish battery life than anything else. In terms of touch, it's a capacitive panel, and it's extremely responsive. Any lag or difficulties with touch controls or soft keyboard are entirely down to the software.

Cellphone cameras are generally horrible, so the Omnia HD's camera is a rare treat. Seriously: I even trusted it to shoot a headphone review last week, and it came through impressively well. It'll match a low-end point-and-shoot in most situations, barring low-light—the sensor can't really handle darker situations too well, and the flash is pretty wimpy—and fast-motion scenes. Video, on the other hand, is at least pocket-cam quality. In daylight it's razor-sharp at 720p, while in low light it's passable. Novel-but-not-terribly-useful slo-mo and high-speed modes are thrown in for good measure. The Omnia HD doesn't quite match up to the best-of-the-bunch Kodak Zi8, for example, but it's amazingly close, especially for a phone. A phone, with a decent camera! How did this happen?

The Software: This is where things fall apart a little. Wherever the Omnia HD's hardware shines—along with the kickass camera, it can handle HD video playback in plenty of codecs—the software is fine. The camera interface and media playback interfaces, music and video, are never distracting and usually do what you expect. Everything else? That's a different story.

Samsung's thrown the old Omnia's TouchWiz widget UI, originally designed for Windows Mobile, onto the Symbian-powered HD. This in itself is fine, since TouchWiz has always been a decent, finger-friendly homescreen, wherever it shows up. Outside of the three main TouchWiz panels, though, is a bizarre UI stew, some from Symbian, some from Samsung, and some from the deepest bowels of design hell. For example: Scrolling! Instead of throwing menus and selecting entries, the selection follows your finger. It's hard to explain, but it's a terrible way to have to trudge around a menu-heavy operating system. The onscreen keyboard seems to be a Samsung special too. It's fine—it's spacious and rarely lags—but it's set on a perfect grid, doesn't come with any autocorrect and generally feels like it was designed in about an hour.

Outside of the core multimedia and homescreen areas, the phone is a fairly raw take on Symbian's S60 5th Edition shell, which means the UI is inconsistent and difficult to tackle with fingers. Not to mention S60's needlessly inserted extra steps all over the place. Want to enter a URL? Press a button, type your address, press another button, and press another. It doesn't make any sense. Samsung's given Symbian something of a makeover, but most of Matt's complaints about the N97 software carry over to the HD. Everything—even basic calling, contact management and OS navigation—is overcomplicated and disorganized, beyond the point of a "learning curve."

Functionally, though, it holds up fine: The browser could be easier to navigate with, but renders with WebKit, supports Flash and generally does its job. Same goes for pretty much everything else: The experience could be smoother, but you'd be hard pressed to find a task that the HD explicitly can't handle. And if you do find a gap, remember that this is full Symbian, so you can always go app hunting. As dumb as the UI can be, don't be fooled into thinking this is a dumbphone: It can do pretty much anything an Android or Windows Mobile phone can, and sometimes even more—it's just that sometimes, it's painfully awkward.

Vivid, responsive, generously proportioned touchscreen

Camera shoots nice stills, surprisingly great 720p video

Powerful HD video playback, wide default codec compatibility

3.5mm jack!

DLNA, but no HDMI

Aging, overcomplicated Symbian/S60 software

UI is extremely inconsistent, occasionally unresponsive

No carrier availability yet, iffy US 3G support

[Samsung]

The Price: $100

The Verdict: At just $20 more than Apple's In-Ear headset, the Klipsch Image S4i is a no-brainer, assuming Voice Control and VoiceOver are priorities to you. If they don't matter, or if you've got an older iPhone or non-Apple handset, the choice is less clear.

Klipsch's headset is one of the only ones on the market with Apple's VoiceOver-compatible chip—a feature we raised a stink about when it first came out, but which turned out to be alright. As far as 3G Shuffle headphones go, this is about as nice as you're going to get. The sound will suit most tastes, but not all: it's extremely clear, and bass is smooth and deep, but never overpowering. Overall the sound reminds me of the V-Moda Vibe Duos—always a reliable standby for better-than-stock iPhone headsets—except slightly more resolved, and less muddy. What this headset doesn't have, though, is the kind of razor-sharp presence that you'd find in headphones like the Shure SE115, or headsets like the (markedly more expensive) Etymotics hf2, or the powerful percussiveness of some of Altec Lansing's UE rebrands. (More on those here.) Isolation and cable movement noise are better than I expected from tips made from rubbery material like this, as is fit: both are excellent, though fans of foam or foam-rubber tips will have to go aftermarket.

Mic quality is fine, too. The Image S4i's mic sits below your chin, nestled inside the inline controls. It's a natural location, and the headset's buttons, which include volume controls, were easy to find and press, though the whole unit is a little slippery for sweaty exercise fingers. The mic, or its location, probably, gave my voice a boomier sound than I got from the Vibes or the Etymotics, though I remained completely intelligible, and background noises, like the mic bouncing off my shirt, or even a rickety old air conditioner, were very hard to notice on the other end of the line. As a bonus, these headsets work in the headphone jack on Unibody MacBooks, for VoIP use.

With Shuffle and 3GS compatibility comes one pretty massive hitch:
That's Klipsch's official compatibility chart, and they're not kidding. If your device isn't on this list, don't expect much: older iPhones get basic play/pause functionality out of the inline remote, while the 1G Touch doesn't recognize it at all. Phones from other manufacturers, including HTC and Samsung, didn't recognize remote or mic input. The Image S4i isn't just 3GS and Shuffle compatible, it's exclusive. And one last minor quibble: I haven't been carrying these things around for very long, and the Klipsch logo—as you can see in the top image—is already flaking off of the otherwise well-styled and built earbuds. Far from a dealbreaker, but disconcerting, considering how new these things are. [Klipsch]

Excellent sound quality for the price, in both mic and earphones

Work with VoiceOver and Voice Control

Styling and build quality are nice, but the finish is delicate

Compatibility list is severely cropped by Apple's special inline remote chip

The Price: $300

The Photos and Video: In sample shots on our kiteboarding trip and at the local beach, the W80 was not the best but sill surprisingly good. Compared to periscoped lens setups, the traditional internal 5x zoom lens made the 12mp shots look sharper than most other waterproof cameras. The 28mm-140mm equivalent lens was sharp edge to edge with a touch more zoom than others in the roundup. Color was good, too.

But I noticed the lens was a little too slow to capture sharp motion underwater where light is rarer than on the surface. (The first sample shot I took in dim light triggered the flash where other models didn't need one.) Colors and exposure was fine, but the grunge resisting lens and lcd were only marginally helpful in combating substances like suntan lotion, grime and surfboard wax. Video is captured at up to 720p, but it didn't look so great. Face detection locked on pretty quickly, and there are several shake reduction capabilities, including digital and movie modes.

The Design: The casing is still one of the smallest and is by far the most pocketable ruggedized model around, but its only good for drops up to 3.3 feet. Models by Lumix and Olympus are far more rugged, although more Hummer-esque, too. Pentax's various scene modes are amongst the most useful around, and there's an simple button to switch between them, but that button and menu is also the only way to easily switch between video and still mode. Quite a chore.

The camera could use a design refresh, in all honesty, and more metal. But it's also good for winter sports, rated to function down to 14 degrees. I liked Pentax's optional floating wrist strap, too.

The Waterproofness: Good down to 16 feet, up from 13 feet in the last generation. Good enough for light to medium beach duty.

The Recommendation: My favorite rugged-ish waterproof camera when size is a consideration.

Compact considering its quasi-rugged chassis.

Decent shot quality.

There are tougher cams out there that take better photos, but only slightly so in all regards.

Could use a redesign, since the W60, W40 and W20 had similar cases.

[Giz, Pentax]

Summermodo is a chance for Giz to get outside and test our gear where it belongs.

The price: $349 with a 2-year contract, after instant rebate, making it T-Mobile's most expensive phone

The conclusion: A respectable swan song for Windows Mobile 6.1, the Touch Pro2 would be a safe recommendation for diehard Windows Mobile fans, and a cautious "consider it" for business-oriented smartphone shoppers, assuming it was priced at $200 or less. It costs nearly twice that much.

The previous Touch Pro was an impressive piece of kit, but something wasn't quite right about it. It could've been the screen—2.8 lame inches, when the emerging smartphone standard was closer to 3, or 3.2. It could've been the battery, which didn't last much more than a day, and in some situations, not even that. But it was almost definitely the fact that it was literally a brick. It was fat and squat, and felt like a clenched fist in your pocket.
The Pro2 has inherited the excellent 3.6-inch WVGA screen from the HTC Touch HD, meaning that it's a much broader device than its predecessor, but somehow, it's actually thinner. Battery life is much improved, stretching to nearly two days with fairly frequent use. And despite being a larger, heavier handset, it feels more like a phone, and less like a chunk of building material.

With the larger footprint comes a revamped keyboard, which is obviously more spacious, but also totally redesigned: instead of the contiguous, plasticky low-profile keys on the Pro, the Pro2's got rubberized chiclet keys. The original Pro's keyboard was good; this one is one of the best I've ever used. Once you get used to the odd placement of the Delete key (it's where you'd expect Enter to be), it's a dream, which is fortunate, since typing on the Pro2's somewhat squishy resistive screen isn't a very gratifying experience, with or without the stylus.
The display half of the device is revamped too, with a less prominent chin—chalk that up to the replacement of the circular d-pad/zoom ring with a left/right zoom strip—and different sliding mechanism, which allows the display to be flipped up as well as slid to the side, for easy reading on a table or, had T-Mobile not stripped out the front-facing camera, hands-free video calling.

I'd miss the zoom/scroll circle a bit more on the keyboardless Diamond2, since the strip doesn't conceal the noticeable input zoom lag as well, and more to the point, you lose the 4-way clicking ability; here, though, it's fine. So far, so good.

Your first impression of the Pro2 is that it's an impressive, heavy, well-though-out chunk of handset, but HTC hasn't done everything right. Like, hey, there's no 3.5mm jack! Instead we get a giant multifunction Mini-USB adapter that somehow manages to be more cumbersome that the old wire dealy—a fact made doubly annoying by photos of other carriers' Pro2s with 3.5mm jacks built in. Internal storage is still measurable in megabytes, expandable by means of a MicroSD slot.

In addition, the camera's the same underwhelming 3.2-megapixel unit as HTC's been using for years, and the core hardware—processor and RAM included—are essentially unchanged (though software tweaks make the whole handset feel faster anyway—more on that later). Lastly, the backplate doesn't feel all that sturdy or well-secured—more than once I flicked it off by accident, though it never fell off in my pocket. Given enough time though, I'm pretty comfortable that it would, which is disconcerting, and feels out of place on such a pricey piece of hardware. (This seems to be a problem across carriers. The stock Euro HTC Touch Pro2 has a different backplate, as you can see in the gallery, but it was even more prone to flying off at the slightest push.)

The software package is actually a pleasant surprise, for what it is. HTC has done a fantastic job gussying up Windows Mobile over the years, and their newest version of TouchFlo 3D is, given WinMo 6.1 almost-over lifecycle, the best this OS will ever look or feel. HTC has reached down as far as they can, so you rarely see 6.1's embarrassing, Windows 3.1-like guts. Even when you do, they've been given modernizing treatments: the tiny, finger-dodging contextual menus have been replaced with larger, HTC-skinned ones, and everything from emails and text messages to system folders and Mobile IE has been given proper inertial scrolling, like in Windows Mobile 6.5. HTC has even gotten a little assertive this time around, adding a Sense-like contacts system to the mix, which lets you flip between contacts' call lists, text messages, and Facebook updates in a single screen, and a thorough email setup wizard, which beats the hell out of Microsoft's default tools. The whole TouchFlo system has been heavily optimized over the years, such that the Pro2 feels like it's been stuffed full of much more powerful hardware, even if it hasn't. And one last thing: there's finally a full landscape mode, instead of that cop-out icon grid. T-Mobile's yanked out two features that were standard on the Pro2—a panel-based Start Menu replacement and HTC's iconic flip-clock homescreen—though you won't miss either too much. Sat side by side with Windows Mobile 6.5—which this handset could eventually be upgraded to for free, if T-Mobile so chooses—HTC's take on 6.1 shows they've done nearly as much to keep this OS relevant as Microsoft has. For HTC, that's admirable. For Microsoft? More sad than anything else.

The stock software bundle leaves a few gaps, but nothing you can't download in a few minutes. Opera Mobile is included, and it's as good as ever. Google Maps and Skyfire weren't, but these free apps worked a treat once installed.

In so many ways, this feels like a tribute to a class of luxury handset that is getting less relevant by the day. Remember the original Sony Xperia? It too had a huge screen, pretty hardware, a fantastic keyboard, a deeply-modified version of Windows Mobile 6.1, and an astronomical pricetag. Now think: have you ever actually seen one in the wild? Smartphones have changed a lot in the last two years, to put it lightly; not only have they gotten smarter, but they've gotten cheaper. The Pro2 is standing alone at the end of a path laid out years ago, that smartphone manufacturers—including HTC, with their Android handsets—have been trying to split off from, and with good reason.

If you really want this handset, you've probably known so since it was announced, and you shouldn't be deterred by anything except this ridiculous price. The handset is fine. But just know this: for $349, you can have virtually anything else on the market today. Putting the Pro2 at this price point means that every prospective buyer will have to compare it to the Pres, the iPhones, the MyTouch 3Gs, the Heroes (soon), and the BlackBerry Bolds of the world, all of which will cost less, and for most people, offer more, and ask themselves: This? Really? [T-Mobile]

Screen is huge

Keyboard is wonderful, even for giant banana thumbs

TouchFlo 3D does an admirable job sprucing up Windows Mobile 6.1

Dude, Windows Mobile 6.1, in August of 2009

The backplate feels like it's going to fly off half the time

No headphone jack, and a stupid adapter

THREE-HUNDRED AND FIFTY DOLLARS

The Price: $130 w/ 2-year contract and rebate from T-Mobile, or $48.88 with the same strings attached from Walmart

The Verdict: Was this co-designed by Fisher Price?

It's not that it's poorly built—the construction is plenty sturdy, like all good Fisher Price toys. But it's like RIM took the excellent Curve 8900 (which is also on T-Mobile for $30 more) and re-designed it for a very sophisticated 6-year-old.

You can feel and see the corners cut—well, more like rounded—to get to this budget BlackBerry all over the place. The lower resolution (320x240) screen is flat-out depressing compared to every other BlackBerry display in the last year (just look). Instead of the great latch mechanism for the battery door from the Tour, Storm and 8900, it's a plain slab of plastic you pop out with a fingernail. It's also lacking GPS (though Google Maps will triangulate your position via cell towers), and the camera's only 2 megapixels. Bizarrely, T-Mobile isn't shipping it with BlackBerry App World—which got better with the recent 1.1 update—you've gotta go download it yourself.

Hey, it's got the future of BlackBerry stuck in the middle of its face: The trackpad. Swipe your finger over it, and the cursor moves. It's about 90 percent as good as the trusty trackball. The missing 10 percent is that on the occasions the phone lags, the lack of tactile feedback somehow makes it more jarring when the phone fails to respond. But otherwise, it pretty tightly approximates the control of the trackball, so you won't miss it, especially when you realize pocket lint is no longer your phone's mortal enemy. Also new are a triplet of media keys on top of the phone, but I kinda prefer a dedicated lock button.

Even though the BlackBerry platform is starting to feel a little creaky compared to Android, iPhone and webOS, it's still fairly usable, and while the 8520 might have shaved off some hardware features, RIM didn't gimp anything that would cramp performance, so it felt about the same in that regard as the 8900.

Overall, I don't think you should pay more than $100 for the Curve 8520. For $50, it's a solid deal, but if you can spare the extra $50 bucks, the screen alone on the 8900 is worth it.

A BlackBerry for $50, if you buy it at the right spot

Trackpad just as good as trackball (almost)

Keyboard is great (if you like peppy keyboards)

Every new BlackBerry makes BlackBerry OS feel a bit more tired

Feels kinda cheap, like a $50 faux smartphone

Worst BlackBerry screen in a long time—dim, text looks bad

[BlackBerry Curve 8520]

The Price: $3000

The Verdict: The problem is that this set dims the sidelights whenever the program material gets dark, and it does it in the most ungraceful way ever. Check out the menu that I popped on screen, merely to show you what happens to white material on screen when the backlight is dimmed to increase black level.

See how everything white goes dark, too?

So, if there's a scene in a movie where there's a moonlit night, the lighting in this set would crank everything down, including the moon itself. Backlit LED tvs can turn off individual lights to increase blacks, yet keep LEDs lit in the area around the on screen moon; this set idiotically turns everything off. (*Some other sets do this for energy savings, but there's always a way to set the backlight to a consistent brightness level.)

I didn't even benchmark the set after this, as there was no need for me to measure other features when the set had such a glaring problem, which Samsung claims is not a bug. Oddly, many technical reviewers glossed over this fact, giving this set editor choice awards while brushing away the issue.

My impressions of the rest of the set are here, however:
• The TV's colors are inflated like a lot of LCDs but the picture and motion handling are pretty damn comparable to any modern late model LCD.
• There are no buttons on the set, so if you lose your remote, you're fucked.
• The TV is about 1.2 inches thick, and all the ports are tucked nicely away on the side. But because the case is so thin, the speakers sound terribly thin. Worse than on an old 22 inch TV I have in the back of the house.
• The case's translucent edges are among the best designed cases of any modern gadget, in my opinion.
• The internet widgets and content take a long minute to boot up and include Flickr, twitter and weather apps. They aren't worth the $150-$200 over the 6000 series which eliminate these extras. There's a media streamer (which I didn't test) recipes, simple video games, exercises, art and animated children's songs, like this really freaky one about having the munchies.

• Off axis viewing isn't great, but isn't bad.
• If you have noise reduction on on this set, it will strip the grain from movies, practically, making everything look like it was shot on a cheap digital camcorder. Turn it off.
• It's worth repeating that this set is generally gorgeous.
• Like all LED sets, they're energy efficient. But again, there's no localized dimming with this set, which is side, not backlit.

The good news is that Samsung can fix this dimming issue by firmware. The bad news is that I haven't heard they even believe its an issue yet. I've never been so irritated by such a beautiful TV and recommend you steer clear.

A nice picture

Super thin

Dimming sidelight issues.

Sounds thin

Expensive

Price: $499

Verdict: Have you ever wanted to touch Windows XP? No? There's a pretty good reason for that—it's a really crummy touch experience, even with slightly larger-than-usual buttons. It's kind of like trying to poke poke poke around Windows Mobile 5 with a stylus—the onscreen keyboard's small keys gives us pretty horrific flashbacks. (This is at least partly because the T91 is running standard Windows XP Home, not Windows XP Tablet edition.) The "touch optimized" Internet Explorer is a joke. That's okay, Asus knows all of this too, so they've included their own custom interface that sits on top of XP called Touch Gate.

The UI is glossy and glowy and widgety—lighting effects, reflections and giant buttons abound. It can be impressively smooth in action, given how dinky the T91's guts are (1.33GHz Atom Z520). It has its own apps inside, like a flashy photo program, notepad for scribbling, and internet radio. There's widget desktop inside as well. You can move between the Touch Gate homescreen, widgets desktop and Windows XP by flicking left or right. It's confusing and annoying though—why can you only have five programs on the Touch Gate homescreen? To get to other apps, you have to move a slider sitting below to "unlock" the rest of the apps, which pop up in a semi-circle. From there, you can launch one, or trade out the apps that appear on your homescreen.

But let's just cut to it: I'm just not sure why anyone would want this, barring other third party apps you'd install that would unleash the potential of the tablet. (Which is perfectly adequate from a hardware standpoint—the touchscreen is pretty accurate with the stylus after calibration, though the LED-backlit screen suffers from the typical Asus dimness.) With the exception of being able to literally scribble notes and some whizbang photo flick gestures, there's nothing you can accomplish with Asus's custom widget OS overlay you couldn't do on a regular netbook with a regular Windows XP build. And a glorified app launcher for a handful of custom apps + a widget desktop that essentially exist just to lie on top of Windows XP to make touch actually usable aren't exactly compelling reasons to spring for a tablet, especially when more often than not, the experience simply frustrates because the software seems to misinterpret what you intended a tap to mean.

If there's a specific reason you want a Windows XP tablet with a crampy screen that doubles as decent last-gen netbook with a crampy screen, then for $500, the T91 might be your ticket. But if you're just aching for a cheap touchscreen tablet to dick around on the internet, you'd be better off waiting for the $300 CrunchPad. The T91 was much better as the glimmer of hope in our eye at CES.

Asus custom touch interface is flashy without bogging down system too much

Touch is accurate after calibration-provided you use the included stylus

It's half tablet, half last-gen netbook

Windows XP + touch is not the good kind of touch

In the age of 10-inch netbooks, the 8.9-inch screen is weenie-sized

The Verdicts: First, the Panasonic SL-850 turntable: This turntable uses the first version of quadraphonic sound, CD-4, which means the turntable outputs four distinct, individual channels directly to 4 separate speakers. Though it's a form of surround sound, in my test track, "Musicione" by The Guess Who, the differences between stereo and quadraphonic weren't quite as obvious as, say, between stereo and a 5.1 surround sound mix. There's very little of that gimmicky "moving sound" that flits between each channel that's sometimes emphasized in 5.1, but there's definitely a noticeable difference between quad and stereo.

In the chorus of the quad version of "Musicione," each background vocal track gets its own channel, which is reduced to a mere two-way split in the sad stereo mix. Also in quad, there's a treble/bass split between the front and rear, even going so far as to split the drum set components (high hat and snare in the front, floor tom and bass drum in the rear), while the left/right split is saved for the band's two main instruments (piano left, guitar right). It's pretty subtle, and no doubt some of the subtlety was exacerbated by the questionable quality of my speakers, but a stereo version of the same song definitely felt flat in comparison.

The turntable also features an automatic start and stop, a welcome addition, as well as the standard 33/45/78 RPM modes. It's the only automatic turntable I've ever used—instead of lifting the needle and placing it on the record (crazy! I'll go to the gym if I'm gonna work out, you know what I mean?), you just flip a switch and the Panasonic does it for you. My particular model is missing the center pin that holds the record in place—in the past, I've filed down a wood pencil as a replacement, though the drill bit I found amongst my dad's tools (pictured) works nicely as well.

The downsides to quadraphonic? The needle, technically called the "Shibata stylus," is a specialized type. When the time comes for replacement, you can bet it'll cost more and be harder to find than a standard needle. Plus, there are comparatively few quadraphonic records out there—my dad's copy of The Who's Quadrophenia was actually only in two channel. While the SL-850 plays stereo like a champ, you're not buying it for mere two-channel audio.

The GE 4-Channel Receiver is an even more interesting beast. Its most striking feature is the built-in 8-track cassette player, though to my deep, deep disappointment, it refused to play the only two 8-tracks in my possession, a Motown compilation and the Saturday Night Fever soundtrack. No amount of NES-style blowing into the cassettes or the player would yield any sound, so I suppose it must be busted.

But the receiver itself is a powerhouse—it's got both four-channel and simple stereo modes, a stylish AM/FM tuner, and a sweet balance joystick that lets you control which of the four channels (L/R front and back) gets the most emphasis. It was able to push my four speakers (a pair of giant Pioneer cabinets and a pair of slightly smaller Sonys, one of which was mysteriously and unsettlingly sticky) with a ton of power and pretty decent bass/treble control, thanks to a pair of sliders. Unfortunately, it's packing only a single audio input, so it might require an external A/V switcher if I wanted to line in more than just the turntable.

The GE unit is also a handsome-looking deck, with wood paneling all around accompanied by a chrome and black plastic front. The AM/FM tuner lights up in fluorescent green and has this great squiggly grid design, and it's very clear what every toggle and switch does. If it weren't for the busted 8-track deck, it'd be a winner.

Turntable:
Quadraphonic audio recordings sound great

Plays stereo and quad perfectly

Automatic start/stop is a welcome feature

Rare needle could be expensive and/or difficult to replace

Not the best-looking turntable we've ever seen

Receiver:
Powerful, customizable sound (joystick especially is great)

Stylish design

Single input necessitates external A/V switcher

8-track player doesn't work

Heavy as hell

Special thanks to my dad for hoarding all this ancient gear in our basement.

Gizmodo '79 is a week-long celebration of gadgets and geekdom 30 years ago, as the analog age gave way to the digital, and most of our favorite toys were just being born.

The Price: $434 on Amazon

The Verdict: Strong. I hate going running down the feature list in reviews, but the NS4600 has quite a big spec sheet.

• Hot-swappable 3GB/s SATA, 1.5TB per drive, up to 4 drives
• RAID 0, 1, 5, 10 support
• Gigabit Ethernet
• USB HDD and printer support
• One-touch backup
• Built-in BitTorrent and eDonkey downloads
• SMB/CIFS/AFP/NFS Network Protocols Support; Shared Storage for Windows, Unix, Linux, MAC clients
• Time Machine support
• DLNA Streaming (PS3, Xbox, DLNA TVs)
• Cellphone video/music streaming (iPhone, Nokias, PSP, Windows Mobile)
• Internet management/access

And all these features work! Streaming to the iPhone was slick (just enter in the username and password) and fast, and streaming to the Xbox 360/PS3 worked as well as any other DLNA network device. This means that if you set up the correct port forwarding options on your router to punch through your NAT, you can have access to your library of music and videos on your cellphone no matter where you are.

What's also very useful is the RAID support, which you can check our Giz Explains to see why you'd want one. In short, you're going to have all your media and documents on here, and it pays to have some sort of redundancy when (not "in case") a drive fails.

There are editions of their SmartNAVI management client apps for Windows and Mac, which lets you manage shares, stream media, set up new users, set up BitTorrent and eDonkey downloads (very useful if you don't want to keep a separate PC on all the time) as well as set up a Time Machine backup. And yeah, the Time Machine backup works. The backup folder mounts as a drive on your machine, and you back up normally, via Time Machine.

The only downside of this beefy NAS is that it doesn't ship with drives. That means you're paying $434 for just a box, which you still have to populate with your own drives. If you want to max out the storage with four 1.5TB drives at $120 each, that's an extra $480. A 1TB RAID solution at $80 each would only cost you $320. But the fact remains that this is a BYOD solution.

Is this worth it? It depends. We're big fans of pre-built Windows Home Server machines here, and that already has a lot of backup and streaming and remote access apps built in. But it doesn't have RAID, and it doesn't have Time Machine support (except for HP's), and it doesn't have everything this unit has. So yes, even though the Promise SmartStor NS4600 is a little pricey because it runs almost five bills and you have to bring your own drives, it is quite a sturdy and capable NAS. [Promise]

Tons of features

Time Machine support

The SmartNAVI user interface is kind of clunky, but it does what it's supposed to

Expensive for something that doesn't ship with drives

The Price: $300
The Verdict: This helmet cam is great for shooting mountain bike or skateboarding shenanigans, especially if you can steady the camera a bit – a snug helmet mount will work better than the handlebars. Although some sort of steadying device would help a lot, since heads tend to shake more than most areas of the body, this camera tends to shake as much as most others that also lack a fish eye type lens (Don't get me wrong, it has a 135 degree field of view, which is wider than almost all cams on the market. And 135 degrees seems to be a good angle for chasing and filming friends with. ) Colors and detail come out really well, except on snow, which tended to be washed out and over exposed. But it shoots in HD: 1280 x 720 at 30 frames per second, which is output as a 16:9 720p picture. Or 60 frames per second in SD. And that's a rare thing in helmet cameras these days.

The ContourHD's record/stop functioning is matter of sliding a giant tab up or down and is easy to operate, even with ski gloves on. Aiming the device is pretty simple, too, because the field of vision is determined by dual laser pointers, which remind you where your cam is pointing. It is not waterproof, but it held up fine to getting pummeled by wet snow for a run when I duct-taped it to the nose of my snowboard (probably not a recommended mounting option). Speaking of mounting, the camera comes with a goggle-strap mount and a 3M sticky-backed flat surface mount. Optional mounts are coming, including a suction mount for attaching to cars and smooth surfaces of outdoor gear.

The camera itself isn't in a housing, which is great for the form factor, but the aluminum and plastic case will run into some issues: If you fall on this camera, there's no layer of protection for it, and it will get hurt on big enough falls. Wind noise could also be a potential problem, as you can see in some of the videos on VHoldR's site. And there's no way to fully submerge this camera, so its not good for water sports.

You'll also probably want a MicroSD card bigger than the 2GB that comes with the camera, good for an hour of HD footage. The device does charge by USB, though, and having a rechargeable lithium battery, swappable no less, in such a device kicks ass. The battery claim is 3 hours while recording SD, so less with HD.

The two significant shortcomings I saw in the pre-production demo unit they sent have apparently been addressed in the final production run. Those "bugs" they've addressed: the Record on/off switch now has sufficient magnetic strength to stay on when vibrating hard, and the battery will no longer shake loose under serious vibration.

HD on a sport camera.

Rechargeable lithium ion battery

Mounts only on helmet for now.

Not waterproof enough for submersion

Randy Salzman is a volunteer Ski patroller. He rides an alpine/carving board but can pretty much ride anything.
[Vholdr]

The Price: $25

The Verdict: Buy one! If you're anything like me and wake up multiple times in the middle of the night to drink water, you'll be glad you have this Nite Coaster to ensure that you can see the target clearly in your half-asleep haze.

Even if you can feel your way to your glass or glasses or phone with your eyes closed in the dark, the fact that it's illuminated means you can reach it much faster without the risk of knocking stuff over. Less grope time means more sleep time.

And if you're worried about this being overly bright or overly sensitive to motion—it's not. The light is just bright enough so that you can see in the dark, but not bright enough to even match something like a cellphone screen or something that can wake you up when you're asleep. Plus it makes your drinking glass look cool. [Nite Coaster]

If you haven't already checked out MyPleasure.com's MyVibe app in the iPhone's app store, you might want to. Unlike many saucy apps out there, MyVibe is free—and fun.

Here's how it works: There's an on/off button that looks like many computer on/offs so it's easily recognizable. On the right there are up and down arrows to control your vibration - short, quick pulses (smaller #s) or longer slower ones (higher #s, up to 100).

The intensity of the vibration MyPleasure could use for this app is obviously limited by the amount of vibration that the iPhone offers, so the orgasmic potential of the MyVibe app is similarly limited. However, orgasms—while fun—aren't everything.

Anticipation, teasing and seduction play a major role in many people's sex lives. Why not turn on the app, hold the iPhone discreetly against your body while on the metro, in a cab or at work as you exchange sultry IMs or Twitter DMs with your real life partner or dream partner? Having a little vibration can add excitement and tingles to your day (and your genitals). [MyVibe via My Sex Professor]

First vibrator app, works for teasing and seduction.

It's free.

iPhone doesn't have enough vibe power to cause an orgasm.

Dr. Debby Herbenick, author of Because It Feels Good: A Woman's Guide to Sexual Pleasure and Satisfaction, is the Associate Director of the Center for Sexual Health Promotion in the School of Health, Physical Education and Recreation at Indiana University (IU) where she is a Research Scientist. She is also a sexual health educator at The Kinsey Institute for Research in Sex, Gender and Reproduction where she writes (and hosts audio podcasts of) the Kinsey Confidential column and coordinates educational programming. She has a PhD in Health Behavior from IU, a Master's degree in Public Health Education (also from IU) and a bachelor's degree in psychology from the University of Maryland, College Park. In addition, she is certified as a Sexuality Educator from the American Association of Sex Educators, Counselors and Therapists.

Debby writes regular sex columns for Men's Health magazine, Time Out Chicago magazine, Velocity, Cheeky Chicago, Psychology Today and she has also written for Glamour magazine.

Price: $15

The Verdict: Somewhat slippery compared to cloth, your mouse movements are going to feel a little too fast until you get used to it (which is the case with all plastic pads). It's in a "widescreen" format, and a little smaller overall than most mousepads. But overall, surprisingly good, and worth $15 if you need to take a mousepad everywhere 'cause you don't want swine flu on the bottom of your mouse.

Crazy thin

Good mousepad

Wide format might take some getting used to

[Razer]

The Price: $150

The Verdict: The best keeps getting better. We already knew that Eye-Fi cards were great at their main task of delivering photos wirelessly to both your computer and photo sharing sites like Flickr and Facebook, but a steady stream of upgrades has vastly improved the card's capabilities. In addition to the new Pro features announced today, previous cards have added larger capacities, video support, geotagging and hotspot access.

In a nutshell, everything worked great. As always, setting things up with the Eye-Fi manager was a breeze and within minutes I was sending images and video to my desktop and to various sites across the web. Plus, the addition of selective uploading means that I could pick and choose which photos I wanted to send over the network instead of sending the good and the bad en masse (this function is handled by marking images with your camera's "Protect" feature.)

Obviously, a Wi-Fi SD card is not going to be all that helpful when you are away from your network or a hotspot, but the ad-hoc support bridges the gap a bit by delivering the content straight to your computer—freeing up space on the card to take more shots. As for RAW files, I have to admit that I'm rocking a point-and-shoot here—not a DSLR. However, given the near flawless performance of Eye-Fi's cards, I can't imagine why it wouldn't work. In fact, the only real drawback of the card that I can see is that there is no way to discern the status of your upload from the camera itself. Still, in the event that you cut off a shot in mid-transfer, the process will resume as soon as you turn your camera back on. Sure, $150 isn't cheap for a SD card—but if you take a lot of photos the Eye-Fi Pro is worth it.

Performance was nearly flawless.

The addition of selective uploading and ad-hoc network support are useful upgrades for amateurs and pros alike. Support for RAW files will appeal especially to the hardcore crowd.

$150 price includes a lifetime subscription to geotagging suppport.

Owning an Eye-Fi entitles you to download their new iPhone app for free.

Hotspot access is free for a year, but you will have to pay beyond that.

There is no way to determine the status of the uploads from the camera itself.

EYE-FI UNVEILS 4GB WIRELESS MEMORY CARD WITH RAW IMAGE SUPPORT

The Eye-Fi Pro Card Supports Transfers without the Need for a Router or Internet; Users Can Now Select What Uploads

MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif., June 10, 2009 - Eye-Fi Inc. today unveiled the Eye-Fi Pro, a new wireless SDHC memory card for digital cameras that allows professionals and photo enthusiasts to automatically upload images straight from their camera to their computer and the Web. Available today, the Eye-Fi Pro includes RAW image support and peer-to-peer connectivity for a direct connection between the camera and a computer, no router or Internet connection required (also known as ad hoc).

Eye-Fi also announced today that all Eye-Fi card users can now select which photos or videos they want to wirelessly transfer from their camera to their computer or the Web, using the new Selective Transfer feature.

"People are engaged in photography at a deeper level than ever before. They have moved from being casual photographers to passionate enthusiasts, shooting in RAW for more extensive editing, adding geotags for a richer experience or using an online gallery to share their work," said Jef Holove, CEO of Eye-Fi. "These people are looking for tools that advance the art of photography and make it more efficient – and the Eye-Fi Pro does both."

About the Eye-Fi Pro

The Eye-Fi Pro lets users wirelessly upload more file types, including JPEG and RAW images and videos. The Eye-Fi Pro also allows users to create an ad hoc connection through their computer or other mobile device to wirelessly upload media files while away from a wireless router.

"The Eye-Fi Pro has streamlined my workflow. It lets me quickly upload files in the background while I continue my photo shoots. My clients can choose their best shots in near real time," said Jeff Sockwell, an Eye-Fi Pro beta user and professional photographer who used Eye-Fi in a portrait session with more than 150 dance students. "I also have assurance that photos are automatically saved both on my computer and my Eye-Fi Pro."

Like the Eye-Fi Explore Video, the new Eye-Fi Pro will automatically upload images and videos direct to more than 25 online photo and video sharing sites. It also lets users upload away from home at more than 10,000 Wayport and open hotspots, and will automatically geotag photos with information about where the images were taken. The Eye-Fi Pro is now available at Amazon.com and www.eye.fi for an MSRP of $149.

Selective Transfer

Also announced today is Eye-Fi's newest feature, Selective Transfer, that gives users more control over which photos and videos to upload. Using the standard "protect" or "lock" feature in any camera's menu, users can select which files to wirelessly upload. Any "protected" photo or video will automatically be uploaded, and all photos and videos will remain on the memory card until the user manually deletes them. Selective Transfer is free and available now for all Eye-Fi card users through the Eye-Fi Manager.

At the Leading Edge of Camera Technology – Eye-Fi Connected cameras

In effort to meet prosumers' increasing camera feature set demands and widen wireless adoption, manufacturers are offering Eye-Fi card recognition and optimization. The Eye-Fi Connected camera features range from power setting optimization to on-camera notifications while photos and videos are wirelessly uploaded. These new cameras include Nikon's latest model, the D5000 (which follows in the footstep of the already Eye-Fi Connected D60 and D90), as well as the entire spring line-up of Casio cameras, including the Casio EX-S12, Casio EX-S5, Casio EX-FS10, Casio EX-FC100 and Casio EX-Z29.

Eye-Fi's complete line-up of wireless SD and SDHC memory cards range in price from $49-$149 and are available at www.eye.fi, in store at Apple Retail Stores and Best Buy locations, and at major online retailers such as Amazon.com, Walmart.com and Costco.com.

Eye-Fi has received numerous product awards including Popular Science's "Best of What's New" for 2008 and PC World's "The 100 Best Products of 2008."

For more information, please visit www.eye.fi, or follow Eye-Fi on Twitter @EyeFiCard

[Eye-Fi]

The Gadget: Sony Ericsson W995a, an unlocked Wi-Fi and A2DP-enabled 3G cellphone that puts together a 8.1-megapixel camera—with geo-tagging capabilities, face detection, flash, autofocus, and dedicated buttons—and a Walkman.

The Price: $600

The Verdict:
The W995a is well built, feels solid. I mean, there's nothing particularly wrong with it except for the keyboard, which seems flimsy and prone to inaccurate typing. It has a beautiful screen. The media reproduction capabilities are OK. You can use physical buttons to play, pause, go forward, and backwards. And they light up! Oh the joy.

The image associated with this post is best viewed using a browser.And then there is the camera. I had great hopes for the 8.1mp camera. I wanted it to be great, but I just ended up with higher resolution versions of the same photos I get with my other phone...

OK. I'm sorry. I can't do this.

The real story is that the W995a is basically the same cellphone as the first cellphone I've ever used and loved dearly: My trusty Sony Ericsson T68i. That thing and I had history, and I loved it. I loved the same matrix menu, the same convoluted user interface that makes you go through a hundred screens before reaching the place you want, and I even loved the predictive keyboard—which actually really didn't work well, but whatever.

That was in 2002.

I don't mean to pick on the Sony Ericsson here, which is probably one of the best dumbphones of its kind, a totally acceptable high end specimen. No, I'm talking about the entire damn category of super expensive phones that do nothing special compared to the phones we had a decade ago.

I went through other dumb cellphones after that, all the same, from Nokia, from Motorola, LG, Samsung... all these dumb cellphones have the same clunky interfaces, the same bad media handling, the same bad internet access. There were "smartphones" then too. But they weren't that smart. I had a BlackBerry, for example, that was just a glorified cellphone with a wheel and nicer mail than the rest, which didn't have mail at all. Sony and Nokia also had "smartphones." They were so happy.

Fast forward to 2007. With the cellphone market already saturated with hundreds of combinations of dumbphones, Apple released the iPhone. Nokia dismissed it. Motorola too. (Motowho?) So did RIM and the rest. These "newbies" from Cupertino didn't understand the cellphone business—how could they introduce a phone? The market thought otherwise and the iPhone stole the show. People saw simplicity wrapped in good design, and even though not everybody bought it, everybody realized all of a sudden that cellphones don't have to be clunky machines full of buttons and neverending arbitrary menus.

The iPhone redefined the game and people instinctively knew that, and the smartest companies followed suit. Next came Android and Palm Pre and the not-yet-released Windows Mobile 7, versions of the same basic idea: Smartphones are not about piling on the crap. Smartphones really are simplerphones which, because of that, actually can do more than dumbphones.

The Real Verdict—About All Dumbphones: So my final question is: How can companies keep releasing more or less the same dumbphones from 2002 in 2009? I don't have a clue. There are 4 billion cellphones in the planet and only 10% are smartphones. That figure is rising quickly and will only accelerate as Android takes off, Pre launches, RIM tries to make a smarter BlackBerry, and Apple keeps with its plan to dominate the world with the iPhone family of products. It's no coincidence that Nokia—the largest set maker in the world—has gone from earning billions to trying to survive. It's also no coincidence that Nokia's head honcho names Apple, Microsoft and RIM as his chief competitors, and not LG, Samsung or least of all Motorola.

Some will say that there should be cellphones for everyone. True. Cheap dumb cellphones for $10 a pop are great. But this thing costs $600. Other similar phones from other companies cost about the same without a contract. In 2009, I can't find any excuse to buy something like this.

Dumb cellphones—like the W995a—are like the coolest, fastest typewriters in an age of word processors.

And they should all die.

The Price: $60

The Verdict: That's pretty damn expensive for a non-powered hub, even if it does look quite nice.

The moshi logo on the front lights up, the wedge is nicely shaped and it just looks nice, but $60 is quite a lot for a hub.

It comes with both a USB extension cord in case your machine (MacBook Pro or iMac) is slightly further away from your hub, and a Firewire 400 to 800 converter. But the setup does work, which is what's important.

So you'll have to ask yourself whether or not you need both a USB and a Firewire hub, whether you need to have it in one device, and whether you can justify paying $60 for it. [Moshi]

Update: The hub supposedly acts like a powered hub without an AC adapter because it draws power from the USB and Firewire ports (if they're both hooked up), so it can power more things than standard USB hubs.

If you've got a crappy ISP, obviously, a special thingamajig on your end won't help you—it can't fix the whole internet, and it doesn't claim to. What it claims is that network traffic running through it bypasses the Windows network stack, so it's a more direct connection to your game, and less load on your CPU, resulting in less lag and theoretically a higher framerate. Different from the older Killer cards, this also has a built-in voice processor to offload chat. You can customize network and bandwidth priority, app by app—giving your games the highest priority, obvs—so theoretically you can leave your torrents running and game normally.

Did it work? No and yes. I really didn't notice any difference in my framerates or latency playing Team Fortress 2. I keep the game's netgraph feature running by default, and I always play on the same server, so I have a pretty solid grip on what's typical of my machine in terms of framerate and latency. Playing 10 minutes on my standard connection and then switching immediately to the Killer Xeno for 10 minutes, and repeating this sequence three times, it was about the same every time—if it improved my connection or framerate, I couldn't taste it.

It does do a pretty decent job as a local QoS (quality of service) client. I ran a bunch of torrents and my game played perfectly okay, just like if I wasn't downloading a whole bunch of crap. However, if you've got a decent router, you could do the same thing if you know what you're doing. And really, router-level QoS is the only way to deal with your roommate's crazy torrent habits—the Killer Xeno Pro can't do anything about what the other people on your network are doing, so even then, its application is fairly limited.

Is it worth $130? If your computer's crappy enough, getting back that slight amount of overhead used by the Windows network stack and your usual chat client could make a difference. And if you can't figure out QoS, its software is pretty easy to use. But if your computer's that crappy, why are you spending $130 on a network card? [Killer Xeno Pro]

The original Twitterific was designed around reading—so that's what it was (and still is) good at. Twitterific 2 takes that core and layers stuff on top of it. In order to keep things looking clean, it hides everything behind buttons, so it feels like there's a lot of drilling down every time you want to do something, which ironically makes the otherwise exceptionally eye-pleasing app feel cluttered and busy.

But feature parity is finally here: You can now do basically anything you can with Tweetie or other full-featured apps, like actually follow and unfollow people, split the timeline up between your regular one and replies, drill down into threads, search—though it's stuck in an odd place—check trends, see people nearby, etc. Two awesome, unique features: Marking tweets is like favorites, except it's private, it has a compressor that shortens both URLs and text, which squeezing the most you can out of 140 characters.

It's still the best reading experience of any Twitter app, strictly from an eyeball point of view, but I wish it managed to add all of the new features without losing some of the focused, streamlined feel of the original. The free version is a decent alternative to Twitterfon, but if you're debating between spending $3 on Tweetie or $4 on the paid version of Twitterific, Tweetie wins. [Twitterific]

The Price: $80

The Verdict: Thinner than the Fastmac iV, but less charge and it doesn't come with an on-board flashlight.

Unlike the iV's 30-pin standard iPhone/iPod connector for charging itself, this uses a miniUSB solution, so you'll have to carry around/use a different charger from your standard iPhone. On the upside, it is quite a lot thinner than the iV to the point that it's possible to leave it on your phone at all times.

If you're looking for a battery pack you use for emergencies that can last you a long time, we'd recommend the iV. If you're looking for something you use daily because you often times forget to charge your phone, or if you just need a lot of power daily because you call a lot, this is a decent solution. [PhoneSuit]